M&S Redevelopment Plan Includes Ten-storey Tower

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New store on King Street could have 400 student flats built over it

Visualisation of scheme showing new building on left from The Hammersmith Society

Marks and Spencer (M&S) has published outline details of its plans for the redevelopment of its store at 27 King Street in Hammersmith.

The existing ‘not-fit-for’purpose’ two-storey building is going to be demolished and replaced with a market-style store offering only food products. The plan sees the addition of a ten-storey tower which will include over 400 units of Purpose Built Student Accommodation (PBSA).

M&S has been at its current address for nearly 100 years. The current store used to have a uniform frontage but, according to the Hammersmith Society, partial demolition and ‘the machinations of former planning constraints’ left it with the current broken roofline between numbers 27 and 37 on King Street. This façade would be retained and restored with the gaps filled in and the tower block would be set back from King Street behind it.

What the store on King Street currently looks like

How it looked in 1932

Visualisation from the developer of the new store

The new store planned will be larger than the current one, which is 6,000 sg ft, at around 15,000 sq ft, and will aim for a ‘market-style’ shopping experience similar to its store in Clapham. Clothing and other product lines would become click-and-collect only.

The Hammersmith Society has expressed frustration at M&S’s unwillingness to provide properly verified views showing visualisations of the scheme and says that those that have been supplied, after several requests, show the development from unsatisfactory angles, hiding the true scale of what is planned.

The society has projected its own approximation overlaid onto a Google Earth 3D view of King Street, which is shown above. It uses the above visualisation to project the view at an appropriate angle, showing the approximate scale of the proposal. It believes that this development would cast a substantial shadow along King Street significantly reducing its appeal.

The plan envisages a landscaped public space to the rear of the site with the recover of the lost frontage on Blacks Road as well as a new route between King Street and St. Paul’s Church.

Red-brick rear of the store will be demolished and replaced with a new frontage

Staff working at the store during the redevelopment will be offered jobs at other M&S stores nearby and be given the opportunity to return to Hammersmith when the new store opens.

M&S has employed Reef Group and Urban R as architects and interior designers for the project and the project team will be holding several in-person consultation events in the near future.

A planning application is expected to be submitted soon and, if it gains approval, the store will shut next summer with an expected completion of the development in Autumn/Winter 2024.

King Street in 1910

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September 6, 2022